


An Extraordinary Man

by Sue Corkill (mscorkill)



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:29:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mscorkill/pseuds/Sue%20Corkill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth Weir fondly remembers her relationship with a remarkable man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Extraordinary Man

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bonus fic, it meets absolutely none of the requirements rushingwind requested (except for the pairing). However, I was intrigued by the pairing and when this little plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone, I decided to go ahead and write it.
> 
> Written for the Stargate Rare Pairings ficathon; originally posted December 2006.

AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN 

Elizabeth frowned, using the yellow marker to highlight part of the text. It wasn’t her way to micro-manage, but she’d really have to speak to John about the format of his mission reports. Even though she was currently in ‘favor’, so much depended on the goodwill of the IOC and she needed everything to be perfect for the presentation and correcting his mission reports was eating away at her valuable time. 

The soft sound of someone clearing their throat was Elizabeth’s first indication she wasn’t alone in the briefing room anymore. Her head snapped up, and after a brief moment of delayed recognition, she smiled at the individual standing almost tentatively in the open doorway.

“Colonel Carter,” Elizabeth said, setting her marker down. “I didn’t expect to see you this trip.”

A slight smile touched the Colonel’s lips and she stepped further into the room. “I’m only here for an hour or so, before I head to DC.”

Elizabeth sat back and studied the other woman, who still stood uncertainly by the door. In all her dealings with Samantha Carter, she had never seen the woman radiate anything except confidence. “What can I do for you, Colonel?” she asked.

As if that was the opening she needed, the Colonel strode briskly around the table and it was only then that Elizabeth realized she held something in her hand. “Here,” Carter said abruptly, shoving a picture at her. “I thought you might want to have this.”

Elizabeth took the picture, a snapshot really, and looked at it. “Oh my,” she murmured softly, when she recognized the couple in the photo. Her lips curved in a soft smile, memories from what seemed a lifetime ago flooding through her.

“I didn’t know you knew my father.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Elizabeth heard the challenge in the other woman’s voice and knew what she wanted. “I met him when I was on assignment in Tokyo.” She looked at the picture again, her fingers gliding slowly across the smiling couple, she’d been so young…. 

“That was in 1991?”

“1992, I think,” Elizabeth replied. Deliberately setting the picture down, she looked at the Colonel. Funny, she hadn’t ever considered that Jacob Carter had had a daughter her age when she’d been involved with him. “I was sorry to hear that Jacob died. He was a good man.” Elizabeth didn’t say anything more, merely held the other woman’s gaze with steady green eyes. 

“We weren’t always close,” Carter commented. She gestured towards the picture that lay on the table. “He looks happy. You both look happy.”

Elizabeth really didn’t want to get into a discussion of her affair with this woman’s father. “It was a…” Elizabeth paused, she who was never at a loss for words wasn’t sure what to say to this woman…his daughter. How could she describe those magical months with Jacob to his daughter? “It was an extraordinary time,” she finally said, “and I feel privileged to have known him.” 

Deliberately picking her highlighter back up, Elizabeth added, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Colonel?”

The Colonel wasn’t stupid, and if Elizabeth’s sources were correct, was involved with a man, who while not quite old enough to be her father, was still old enough for people to raise an eyebrow at the age difference. Elizabeth had almost decided she’d misread the situation when something seemed to relax in the Colonel’s stance; a slight smile flickered across her face and with a brief nod, Carter left the briefing room.

Sighing, Elizabeth picked up the picture again. Oh god, she had been so young…but even then, she had known what she was doing, no one would ever be able to accuse Jacob Carter of taking advantage of her. If anything, she had taken advantage of him; she had entered into a relationship with him knowing that it wouldn’t last beyond the time she was in Japan and she had enjoyed every minute of it. 

Elizabeth stood, still holding the picture and taking the few steps that brought her to the windows that overlooked the Gate room, letting her memories of that time wash over her. The assignment in Tokyo had been her first big break, she’d just started what she hoped to be a career-making position within the State Department and had been selected to go to Japan to assist in some high level trade negotiations. Of course, the trade negotiations had really been with China, but they had worked out of Tokyo, and newly minted Brigadier General Jacob Carter was head of the military liaison.

She had been prepared to dismiss their military watch dogs on sight and he later confided to her that he had been expecting to ride herd on a group of middle-aged men. He had been partly right, there was a predominance of middle-aged men in the delegation, but something had clicked between them from the beginning. He was smart, funny, sarcastic and when he chose to use it, had more charm in his little finger than most men had in their entire bodies.

And he had charmed her. Not that she had planned on what happened between them. She had a plan for her life and career and at twenty-five, her career was more important than a relationship with any man. Which was maybe why her relationship with Jacob had worked—for both of them. 

Elizabeth looked back down at the picture and smiled fondly, tracing her finger over Jacob’s bald head. He hadn’t been her first lover, but he had been her first older man. She chuckled softly, ‘mature’ was probably the politically correct word these days, but their ages hadn’t mattered when they were together. Jacob challenged her intellectually as much as he had driven her crazy with his right-wing agenda; and she had never let him forget for a minute her own liberal background and ideals. 

It touched her more than she expected that Jacob had evidently kept this picture as a memento of their time together. She hadn’t thought about that time in Japan for years, not even when she had learned of his death, but looking at the picture, it all came flooding back. Especially that day, when one of the other tourists at Mount Fuji had offered to take their picture.

They’d been dancing around a more intimate relationship for several weeks when she’d returned from an extended conference in Beijing and he surprised her with a weekend escape to Hakone. The woman she was today would probably slap down a potential lover if he had sprung something like that on her. But at that time, in that place and with that man, it had been a surprisingly romantic gesture. 

As beautiful as Mount Fuji was, she had been relieved that he hadn’t expected them to climb to the summit, instead he’d made a stupidly amorous comment that reduced her neo-sophistication into a fit of giggles and they’d spent the entire weekend making love, hidden away in the intimate confines of the luxurious guest house in the shadow of Mount Fuji. 

That time with Jacob had been an eye-opening experience for her. If she had been expecting white bread, man-on-top-woman-on-bottom sex with her ‘mature’ lover, she was more than pleasantly surprised—and reduced to a quivering lump of extremely satisfied and exhausted woman more than once by the time they’d boarded the train back to Tokyo forty-eight hours later. Their short-lived affair, months only really, had been one of the more satisfying relationships of her life. 

Of course, she realized a bit sadly, gazing blindly out at the Stargate, memory and time did tend to glamorize the good and minimize the bad, but still…she had loved him and had embraced the newness of her first adult relationship. And it had been a classy relationship all the way, right down to the day she’d kissed him goodbye in the VIP lounge at the Tokyo airport and boarded the plane that took her back to DC and away from him.

Elizabeth hadn’t wondered then, but she did now, turning away from the silent Stargate and slowly returning to the work waiting for her, what she would have said if he’d asked her to stay with him. Not necessarily in Tokyo, but with him, wherever that might have taken them. Sitting down, she set the picture down where she could see it; Jacob with his arm around her, an indulgent smile on his face, she with her eyes shining bright with the entire world before her, and she knew that he would never have asked. 

She had been a rising star, and while Jacob would add another star to the one already on his shoulder, their paths had already started to diverge from the first moment they’d met. She would have figured it out eventually, but probably not before either one, or both of them, had been hurt. It hadn’t been that it was an extraordinary time, she realized, it was that Jacob Carter was an extraordinary man.

Pulling the stack of papers closer and picking up the yellow highlighter, Elizabeth took one last look at the smiling man and the laughing woman in the photo and murmured, “Thank you, Jacob Carter and may you rest in peace.” 

THE END


End file.
